Welcome to a hard-boiled and not without noir blog with news and reviews, occasional outbursts of maniacal Autograph Hound activity, plus archival records from the forty-five year run of The Dashiell Hammett Tour. 
The Dashiell Hammett Tour
1977-2022
Arkham House Ephemera
The Classic Years 1937–1973
Death Lit
Essays and Reviews Selected from Fifty Years of Writing 1974–2024
Willeford
The Book
Tag Archives: Black Mask
Hammett: And Lovecraft
Whoa. Friday the 13th. Time to get a little eldritch and unspeakable for Biography Month. . . . And unspeaking of H. P. Lovecraft, I admit I’m just as interested in the Could Have Beens of a writer’s life as the Plain … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Lit, REH
Tagged "Conan the Argonaut", Black Mask, Cap Shaw, Farnsworth Wright, Including Murder, Lovecraft, Pulps, Raymond Chandler, The Cimmerian, Weird Tales
Hammett: Thoughts on “House Burglary”
Wrapped in its art deco cover, the lost interview with Hammett from 1929 that Terry Zobeck located — “House Burglary Poor Trade” — is the author at a peak. Still writing for Black Mask. Not yet Hollywood. Charming, and willing to answer … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Lit, Tour
Tagged "Death and Company", "House Burglary Poor Trade", "The SImple Art of Murder", "The Thin Man", Alfred Packer, Black Mask, Brooklyn Eagle, Eve Sanderson, Hammett Tour Book, Helen Herbert Foster, Jerome Weidman, Jo Hammett, John Jacobs, Raymond Chandler, Red Harvest, Richard Layman, Terry Zobeck, The Bookman, The Maltese Falcon Society
Hammett: The Lost Interview
For Biography Month, what could Terry Zobeck dig up, with which to startle and amaze? How about a forgotten interview with Hammett, filled with a wealth of biographical detail? Here’s Terry: Hammett didn’t do many major interviews, other than … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Lit, News
Tagged "From the Memoirs of a Private Detective", "House Burglary Poor Trade", Black Mask, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Daily Express, Dashiell Hammett: A Casebook, Eve Sanderson, Helen Herbert Foster, James Cooper, John D. Squires, Richard Layman, Secret Agent X-9, Smart Set, Terry Zobeck, The Bookman, William F. Nolan
Hammett: Coining “The Continental Op”
Was it Cap Shaw? Was it some unheralded editorial assistant? Terry Zobeck plunged into his Black Mask collection to check on who first used the coinage “The Continental Op” to describe Hammett’s short fat Frisco sleuth. That’s with a capital … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Frisco, Lit, News
Tagged "Death and Company", "Pick-Up", "The Farewell Murder", "The Whosis Kid", Black Mask, Cap Shaw, Frederic Dannay, Including Murder, Pulps, Terry Zobeck, The Dain Curse
Hammett: A Couple of Thoughts on Including Murder
As I’ve been brooding over the Robert S. Powell article about the first Continental Op collection Including Murder, two kind of random thoughts hit me: First, Powell describes the emendations in pencil on the tearsheets as being done in a … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Frisco
Tagged Black Mask, Frederic Dannay, Including Murder, Lovecraft, Pulps, pure texts, Red Harvest, Robert S. Powell, The Dain Curse
Hammett: The Lineup for Including Murder
If you don’t have the issue of Clues with the Robert S. Powell article on Including Murder, you may wonder which stories would have made up what would have been Hammett’s first book, if it had been published — all Continental Op tales … Continue reading
Posted in Dash
Tagged "Bodies Piled Up", "Crooked Souls", "Night Shots", "One Hour", "The Gatewood Caper", "The Gatewood Thing", "The Girl with the Silver Eyes", "The Goiden Horseshoe", "The House in Turk Street", "The Secret Emperor", "Women Politics and Murder", "Zigzags of Treachery", 620 Eddy, Black Mask, Clues, Including Murder, Phil Cody, Pulps, pure texts, Richard Layman, Robert S. Powell
Hammett: Including Murder
A few months back Evan Lewis of Davy Crockett’s Almanack let me know he was drifting into town, so I lined up a day where I could show him and his wife as many of the lost byways, precipice gradiants, … Continue reading
Posted in Dash, Frisco, Lit, REH, Willeford
Tagged "Bodies Piled Up", "Night Shots", "The Gatewood Caper", 620 Eddy, Black Mask, Blood and Thunder, Cap Shaw, Clues, Dave Lewis, Donald Wandrei, E. R. Hagemann, Evan Lewis, Frederick Nebel, Howard Wandrei, Humanities Research Center, Including Murder, John D. MacDonald, Leslie Charteris, Lester Dent, Lillian Hellman, Pulps, pure texts, Robert S. Powell, Terry Zobeck, Tony Hillerman, Will Murray
Hammett: “What About His Daughter?”
Birthday 75 for the Golden Gate Bridge. Birthday 118 for Dashiell Hammett. . . . What to do for the birthday this year? How about something Hammettesque I’ve never heard of before? I checked some sources, not a mention — as … Continue reading
